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Bowl Championship Series title game - Ohio State vs. Florida, Jan. 8, 8 p.m. on FOX

Ohio State's Tressel takes aim at his 6th national title.

January 1, 2007|By Andrea Adelson, Sentinel Staff Writer

COLUMBUS, Ohio -- All across the state of Ohio, the man in the glasses and sweater vest is regarded as a conquering hero, a genius, a coach so well-prepared and cunning that it is hard to believe he has lost any games at all.

Look at what Jim Tressel has done at Ohio State, and it is easy to buy into the hysteria. He is 24-8 against teams ranked in the Associated Press Top 25 -- including 8-2 against those in the top 10, 5-1 against rival Michigan and 4-1 in bowls.

He will face another coach who is good in big games, too, when the Buckeyes (12-0) play Florida for the national championship Jan. 8 in Glendale, Ariz. Florida Coach Urban Meyer also has been known to come up with a good game plan or two of his own.

Their success should not be so surprising. Both have similar styles that have allowed them to build champions. They are intensely private, say even less and are known as well-prepared coaches and great recruiters who study the game harder than most. But Tressel has more experience and championships, so his presence on the sideline gives Ohio State even more of an advantage.

"We're just happy that we have a great coach, that we can just go out and be prepared and know in our hearts we can win this game," star wide receiver Ted Ginn Jr. said. "He's not going to tell us the little things. He's going to explore everything, what to look for. That's what you need out of the coach."

You need a little bit of resilience, too. Tressel has plenty of that. There is, after all, a reason he has been given the nickname "Teflon Tressel." Somehow, he has found a way to cook up plenty of big victories while deflecting any controversy that has ensnared his teams. First at Youngstown State, when a starting quarterback admitted taking money from a booster. Then at Ohio State, where Maurice Clarett went from star tailback on a national champion to pariah and starting quarterback Troy Smith took money for work he never did in 2004.

Tressel grew to love football because of his father, Lee, the coach at Division III Baldwin-Wallace College in Berea, Ohio, a suburb of Cleveland. He used to watch tape with his dad, go to practice, help in any way he could. Eventually, Jim played for his father. Lee Tressel, who died in 1981 of lung cancer, went 115-52-6 from 1958-80 and won a national title in 1978.

Because Jim admired his father so much, he decided to get into the coaching business, too. He wanted to follow in the same footsteps, so Jim started his career as an assistant at Akron in 1975, then eventually worked under Earle Bruce at Ohio State from 1983-85.

"Jim told me he wanted to be a successful coach at a small school like his dad, but after being here as an assistant coach, he must have been bitten by the Buckeye bug," Bruce said in a phone interview.

Indeed. But it took a while for Tressel to get back to Ohio State.

He eventually became coach at Division I-AA Youngstown State in 1986. His first team went 2-9. But Tressel never stays down for long. He used his football smarts, meticulous preparation and relentless film study to help build the program into a powerhouse, winning four national championships.

He developed a reputation for learning how to win big games there with the same no-nonsense, controlling approach.

His brother, Dick, the running backs coach at Ohio State, said, "That's where it was pretty firmly established he had that skill, that artistry."

It also is where he escaped unscathed following an NCAA investigation for the first time. The starting quarterback on his first national-championship team in 1991, Ray Isaac, later was found to have received $10,000 from a booster and the use of cars from the chairman of the school's board of trustees.

Tressel said he never knew about the exchanges, and Isaac said he never told Tressel about them. After an internal investigation, the school informed the NCAA in 1994 there was no reason Tressel should be reprimanded; the NCAA agreed.

Tressel won a third national championship that same year. The near-miss with the NCAA did not deter the University of Miami from calling in 1995. The Hurricanes saw his potential for success on the next level with amazing foresight, and Tressel became a finalist for the job.

But UM hired Butch Davis instead, which was just as well. Tressel wanted to stay in Ohio to be closer to his family. That hardly seems out of character. In his entire 21-year coaching career, he has worked outside the state of Ohio just once: as Syracuse's quarterback coach from 1981-82.

It was not meant to be for him to wear a green sweater vest. Tressel spent a few more years in Youngstown before jumping for Ohio State in 2001, replacing John Cooper. The Buckeyes started winning big games again.